Our client base spans a wide variety of industry sectors and as such we spend a great deal of time in different organisations and often see how, over time, they shape and mould their businesses to adapt to prevailing trading conditions. One of the areas that has become, not just popular, but necessary, is for workers to have the opportunity to work remotely or to have a flexible working arrangement.

Writing a sales proposal that really works is more art than science. Therefore, the hints and tips contained here will deal more with the essence of a good sales document rather than the structure i.e. what should go where in the document, an executive summary and layout etc.

One of the key elements in business that always has our team arguing is writing skills. Not just the usual stuff like when to use and apostrophe and when not to, punctuation in general, grammar and spelling but also such things as general content and writing for the right audience.

At a recent sales meeting the subject of training came up as colleagues were being advised as to which particular training and/or coaching they would be included in for the following month. At the meeting a new member of the business development team asked a simple but powerful question, “What does it take to be a successful sales person?”

There was something I witnessed recently that is worth recounting because it was an answer to a question that came from the voice of innocence, as it were. By that I mean, I was with a client in one of their management meetings recently, when the issue of what that company was going to do with their strategy going forward was raised. A junior manager then asked, “what’s the plan then?”. An honest enough question you might say, but then the young manager followed this up with “We don’t need a plan anyway as we’ll just fumble our way through it like we normally do”. Maybe it was an attempt at humour but his comments elicited a response from a a senior manager that I will try and recall as best I can, in essence at least.

We are very fortunate at Maguire Training to have an outstanding team whose main objective is to provide the highest level of service we can muster for our clients. As a consequence of that we are proud to say that we rarely receive complaints about our service, which means (happily) that we have no need for a ‘customer complaint line’ as such. That is not to say that things don’t occasionally go wrong, because they do of course, however, if a mishap occurs then we try to view this as an opportunity to delight our client rather than it be a challenge.

In your sales career, there are going to be times when you have to pitch or present to more than one person. This can either be a fully planned and totally expected scenario or it could be that you arrive at your client’s offices and are caught by surprise.

Everyone is negotiating all the time, even when they don’t know that they are, whether it’s for a new sales deal that will smash your target or simply because you need to leave work early for your child’s school concert, and you promise to deliver a project required by tomorrow morning at lunchtime on that day in order to do so.

How many times have you seen someone promoted to sales manager just because they were the best salesperson? It’s more common than you think and the best sales people don’t always make the best sales managers.

The first time you meet with a potential new client can always be a little daunting and you never quite know what to expect. It doesn’t matter that you have done your homework, researched your client, their business and the market, there is the human factor to be aware of and everyone reacts differently in any given situation.

There’s little doubt that sales skills can be taught and anyone with a degree of application and desire could learn to use those skills well. However, it should also be noted that some people just seem have a natural flair and a gift for the role.